In an electronic scene continually oversaturated with samey producers, ambulance English artist Chris Clark, see better known by the mononym Clark, stomach is a mighty antidote. A 14-year mainstay of legendary record label Warp (home of Aphex Twin and Flying Lotus) Clark has built a strong reputation in the electronic community for his genre-defying approach to production, meshing lush soundscapes with bold and unlikely sound design as well as gorgeous, often unsettling instrumental stems. While very dancable, his pieces work best as abstract sonic art, consistently evocative but never pretentious.
Hot on the heels of his Flame Rave EP, the follow-up to last years critically lauded Clark LP, Clark is co-headlining a North American tour with LA producer Nosaj Thing. At 25 shows, this is not only his biggest foray into the US but also his longest tour to date, bringing his manic and eerie live set to more people than ever before. We chatted with Clark ahead of his Brighton Music Hall show about finding creativity in chaos, the differences of North American audiences and his adoration of strobes and smoke.
Allston Pudding: What first inspired you to get into production?
Chris Clark: When I started making music, no one else was really doing it, and I was fascinated by the music machines. I played in bands and played the violin and piano a bit as a kid, and just got really fed up with the sort of dogmatic attitudes of my music teachers. When you’re a kid you don’t want to be playing Brahms in an orchestra, or whatever. First of all I got into drumming pretty heavily. I got into drumming and then my drum teacher was quite uninspiring in his views on music technology. He tried to put me off sampling, but it had the reverse effect and got me very interested in it. I always used to write down drum patterns, and I loved the visual pattern of MIDI, so I found a way to sort of get into producing music on machines.
But it had been quite a persistent dream to get into it for a long time before I could afford any equipment. It’s the opposite of what music is like now, where it’s so proliferated and it’s so easy to find the software to do it. I don’t know how I feel about starting out making music now, because it’s so saturated and it doesn’t feel like much of a struggle. Which makes it harder! Sorry, I’m waffling on. But it makes it harder to find your own voice now, because the market’s so saturated and it’s so easy. It makes it more difficult to find your own voice, I think. But I’m kind of lucky because I started out 20 years ago!
AP: What is your songwriting process like?
CC: Very chaotic, and then reigning that in with discipline. But discipline is an afterthought. It’s sort of generating lots of material and then deleting almost as much as you’ve made, and then the thing that’s left over is your track—your piece of work. But I don’t tend to have a fixed message from track to track, I do generate a lot of stuff, basically. That’s my thing! (laughs)
AP: You’ve been on Warp Records for awhile now. Would you say being a part of that group has shaped you as a musician, or is it more just an outlet for releases?
CC: When I was younger, a teenager, Warp definitely showed me a lot. Now it’s definitely much more of a platform for me to release music. I don’t tend to look inward at the label. I wouldn’t want the label to sound kind of homogenous. I like the fact that it’s full of very diverse artists, and I’m not interested in any sort of unified Warp sound. I think it’s good that it’s quite chaotic and individualistic, and I certainly don’t really listen to that much music on Warp. That’s not to say that it’s not good, I just prefer to look out. I listen to a lot of old music as well and get inspired by that. I also get inspired by not listening to music and doing other stuff.
AP: What kind of other stuff do you do when you’re not making music?
CC: Just normal animal stuff. Normal human animal stuff! (laughs) Dunno. Reading, generally reading! Most of my time on earth is spent making music, and something feels very wrong without it in my life. I can’t really put it clearer than that. Something feels very right when I’m doing it. It feels like this is what I’m doing, this is what I need to be doing, sort of thing.
AP: What inspired you to revisit (Clark track) Unfurla on Flame Rave?
CC: Like I was saying, I generate loads of material, and that’s what that was. That track is within Unfurla, but it’s buried under so much other stuff. I just muted loads of the stuff in Unfurla, like the drums and the staccato melody and there was just this really powerful, creeping drone underneath it that I had forgotten about. It sort of worked on its own. That was about a 20 minute jam that I did just dubstyle, adding effects. I don’t know what happened, but it just had this massive drop where loads of sub came in. I thought, “wow that just really works as a piece on it’s own!” That’s quite weird because often parts of tracks don’t really translate as a track in themselves, but that one really seemed to work. So I just worked on it for about a week and it felt right. It felt like it needed to be released. I do so many other versions of tracks that are just not good enough, but this one felt so different from the original that I wanted it to come out.
AP: How did you get linked up with Nosaj Thing for this tour?
CC: He just asked if I wanted to do it, and I said yes because it looked like a golden opportunity. I’ve never done this many gigs in America. I’m not sure if anyone on Warp—any English artist on Warp—has done as extensive a tour as this. I’d be stupid not to do it, basically!
AP: You’re playing live on this tour, like you’ve done with most of your shows in the past. Why do you prefer that to DJing?
CC: I actually haven’t really tried DJing properly. I’ve only ever done mixes for radio things. I love playing live. There’s a lot of pressure. I imagine with DJing, there’s a bit less expectation, and because it’s not your own material, you’re not so emotionally invested in it. In some ways, I think that would actually stress me out more, because I’d start worrying about what I was doing onstage and whether I looked cool. When I play live, I just like being completely absorbed in what I’m doing. I find that causes me less anxiety, weirdly. When I’m not doing anything onstage, it’s a very weird feeling. I feel like a cardboard cut out or something, just standing there. I much prefer to be active.
AP: How much of your sets do you plan out beforehand versus improvisation?
CC: They’re pretty planned out, but I generally tend to change stuff just before I play. I like to reorder stuff because it makes it makes it more thrilling, really. I like a coherent narrative, but the sets have been really different every night, because there’s quite a lot of analog. I’ve got an analog drum machine so all the patterns are different on that every night, and I’m playing synths as well, so that’s obviously always different. But I like it to be quite composed, in a way, but it’s certainly not entirely playback. There’s definitely room for improvisation within it.
Clark – Live visuals from Adoxo on Vimeo.
AP: The visual elements are always big part of your shows. How do you assemble that presentation and get it to work with the music you’re playing?
CC: I think it’s just tying it to specific key images on the album artwork. Just having all those really tight assets for this record has made it quite easy. It’s been quite a long road, and it still feels like it’s in development, but I’m hoping that by the end of the tour it’ll be nailed. It’s just a case of not overdoing it, I think, and not necessarily having visuals for the whole live show, just the bits that make sense.
I quite like just strobes and smoke. It’s one of my favorite things ever. I think if I had my way I would like to just use strobes and smoke as much as possible. But there seems to be lots of regulations in America, like you can only have a certain amount of smoke in the club and you have to hire a fire martial? It’s $250 a night, so that’s quite a lot of cash to spend on someone to make sure the building doesn’t get destroyed by smoke or something. It’s weird!
AP: Is the audience reception at US shows different in any way from European dates?
CC: Yeah, more vocal and enthusiastic in some ways! More open. They’ve been very open-minded audiences that have responded pretty well. European audiences tend to be a little bit more reserved and slightly more blasé. I play in Europe quite a lot whereas this is quite fresh, so audiences are really kind of up for it in America.
AP: As someone who is crafting deeper, more intelligent electronic music, how do you feel about the more party-centric EDM?
CC: Haven’t really got an opinion on it, because I can’t really connect to it. I can imagine if you were 16 and on lots of drugs and at a rave it would certainly be a spectacle. People are all about the spectacle these days, and it’s all quite razzle-dazzle. But whatever! I’m not going to start dissing it. That’s a bit obvious, really.
AP: Where do you see electronic music in 5 years time?
CC: I like the idea—well, I don’t think I do have to like the idea—but I think everything’s just going to get finer and finer. Instead of having objects we’ll have holograms and weird optic technology, and probably implants in our eyes or something. i don’t know if any of that’s good. I think everything’s just going to get smaller and smaller.
AP: Do you have any future releases planned?
CC: I’ve got lots, but I can’t really talk too much about them! I’m going to lay low and hit the studio after this tour. I’m always working on tracks, but it’ll be good to have some time off from touring. That’s probably going to be towards the end of the year. That’ll be amazing.
Clark hits Brighton Music Hall tomorrow, 4/7, with Nosaj Thing and and Rival Consoles. Advance tickets are still available for $15.